Food for Thought:

Aspertame and Mexican Coke.

When I took over managing a cafe in Austin, TX, I had to take a 40 hour food manager course. The main thing I learned from the instructor in that course was something out of the scope of the material, no doubt, but had a profound impact and has stuck with me ever since. He said that studies/autopsies have shown that our bodies don't know what to do with aspartame as a foreign substance, and so it just collects as a white film on our brains! Um, that was enough for me to stop drinking it back then, and now there is even more research being done to correlate it with serious health problems: http://now.uiowa.edu/2014/03/ui-study-finds-diet-drinks-associated-heart-trouble-older-women and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8939194

It is well documented that when the temperature of Aspartame exceeds 86 degrees F, it coverts to formaldehyde, which is toxic to us in many ways and known to be a human carcinogen. I personally became allergic to formaldehyde when exposed to heavy Ecolab chemicals at the cafe I was managing, and have had a whole host of skin issues because of that. I had to completely remove formaldehyde releasing chemicals from the daily personal products I used, and it was in many things (but this is fodder for a separate post).

The bottom line is it is worth reading into and making up your own mind based on what evidence is out there. I sometimes feel helpless about things like this, knowing best way to make an impact (and knowing people who still consume Aspertame and not wanting to impede on their choices), but then I remember that it only took this one person mentioning this to me for me to have awareness and change the way I lived.

When I need a soda fix, I go for a Mexican Coke, which, besides being trendy and cool, is sweetened with cane sugar instead of corn syrup or Aspartame. And there's something so satisfying about those glass bottles!